


Jenny Take My Hand

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: and together they fight crime [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Advisory: a side character gets blackmailed with intimate photos, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/F, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8784346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: "I think Lesbian Lady Detective has a real ring to it, don't you?"





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Red Sky In The Morning, in which Jenny, Sarah and Abby live in a castle, and together they fight crime. (It will probably make a great deal more sense if you have read Red Sky In The Morning.) It’s also directly inspired by the Studio Killers’ song Jenny. Thank you bellafarfalla for the beta!

_I wanna ruin our friendship/We should be lovers instead_

_– Jenny, Studio Killers_

 

           

            Jenny didn’t live in London these days. Oh, she still had the flat, and often stayed there, but she didn’t _live_ there. The flat was clean, thanks to a housekeeper, and everything was in good repair and good style, which was all Jenny asked for. Her home was in the thick walls and deep history of Castle Anburgh, and she had no intention of ever giving it up.

 

            It was useful to have the flat, though, and a significant saving on other potential expenses. Quite apart from anything else, hotel rates in London were ludicrous, and having to arrange for a hotel room cut their freedom of movement unacceptably. As it was, Jenny, Sarah and Abby could comfortably share the two-bedroom flat if someone took the sofa-bed, and Sarah and Abby had their own keys for their own independent jaunts to London.

 

It had also, to some extent, become Jenny’s office. Sarah had got into the habit of referring to it as 221b Baker Street, although it was in Fulham: people who wanted to talk to Jenny about something they had lost and would like to have found came to the flat when they were too sad or too scared to speak about it in public, and not frightened enough to take to the open air. Some of Jenny’s clients insisted on speaking to her in wide open spaces, just in case the flat was bugged. It was – for security reasons – but all of the bugs were Jenny’s. She had that checked regularly by her own carefully vetted independent contractors.

 

On this occasion, Jenny, Abby and Sarah were all in London, and not for reasons connected to James Lester’s downright peculiar machinations. Those were the cases that most often required expertise from all three of them, and Jenny disliked them very much because she suspected that they were only being given parts of the story. She knew how thoroughly James Lester had ruined Christine Johnson’s career, with her help, and she still wasn’t completely sure why he’d done that. Not that she’d liked Christine, or had had a high opinion of her. On the contrary, she’d disliked the woman intensely. But James Lester had chosen to ruin Christine Johnson, and – for all Jenny liked him, for all she had a certain basic faith in his good intentions, for all he had never reneged on an agreement yet – Jenny still had no idea why. She kept accepting the assignments, after due consultation with Sarah and Abby, but that was chiefly because Abby enjoyed the chance to exercise her animal handling skills and Sarah loved the mystery of it, without ever thinking why there was a mystery in the first place – she just trusted that Jenny would deal with that. Jenny did deal with that, and on a certain level she found it satisfying. That and the healthy paycheques were enough for now.

 

The taxi from the station stopped and let them out into the rain outside the flat. Abby bolted for the door and unlocked it while Sarah paid the driver and Jenny collected together their luggage, then the two of them dashed indoors to join her. The quietly stylish lobby had a large, heavy-framed mirror on one wall and a table with a vase of cut flowers stood up against another. Its floor was marble, or at least, marble effect, and a plushly carpeted staircase led upstairs. The three women took the lift, and for the four floors it took to reach Jenny’s flat Jenny kept thinking about what they were all doing in London, trying to straighten out a diary, for which Sarah was far too relaxed and Abby far too independent-minded. Abby had a course to attend at UCL on crime involving wild animals and wild animal products, and several standing appointments with the soldiers off Lester’s project, who she’d got reasonably attached to and who kept teaching her to do things like shoot and drive armoured cars, all of which Jenny viewed with slightly sceptical approval. Sarah had a conference to present to – Jenny found her ability to turn her research for their work into publishable work seriously impressive, even if it did mean papers all over the kitchen table for weeks – and family to visit in Sussex, which was much easier to reach from London than from Castle Anburgh.

 

Jenny thought about her own packed programme of meetings, networking dinners, parties and other similar nonsense, and sighed heavily. Sarah shook her shoulder gently and she startled.

 

“Sorry,” Jenny said, caught by a warm light in Sarah’s dark brown eyes that suddenly seemed fascinating. She’d been up till four on a conference call with a demanding client, and was shattered. She hadn’t even been able to sleep on the train, since she had had work to do. “I was miles away.”

 

            “You need a break,” Abby announced, standing in the flat’s open front door with their bags. Sarah had evidently been holding the lift for some moments.

 

            “She needs to get rid of Evan Patterson,” Sarah said emphatically. “Who does he think he is?”

 

            “American,” Jenny said, pulling her ankle boots off wearily. “And arrogant. Which does not go without saying, but in this case, explains the early-hours phone call. Among other things.”

 

            “Isn’t he the one who mistook me for a boy?” Abby grinned savagely and ran a hand through her pixie cut – even shorter than usual, thanks to a dramatic collusion between her and Jenny’s favourite hairdresser that had resulted in some very directional spikiness and a back section so short Angelo had had to get out the clippers. At the time of the unfortunate misprision, she had just come back from an unexpectedly muddy, cold run around the castle, and had been dressed in baggy tracksuit bottoms and shirt and a large quantity of mud.

 

            “Yes,” Jenny said, filling the kettle and collapsing into a kitchen chair. White plastic and vaguely resembling a squashed bucket on stilts, it swallowed her up, but at least she could lean back into it comfortably without getting a splinter, unlike some of the chairs she’d had to get rid of at Anburgh. “And then you insisted on shaking hands with him.” The look on Evan Patterson’s face as droplets of mud had splattered all over his handmade Italian suit was one Jenny hoped never to forget. Sitting in her office patiently negotiating with him in New York and trying to stifle her yawns last night, she had summoned the mental image of it repeatedly.

 

            Abby smirked and shrugged.

 

            “He had it coming,” Sarah sang, under her breath and out of tune, “he had it coming, he only had himself to blame –”

 

            Jenny snorted, and joined in, along with Abby. “If you’da been there – if you’da seen it – I tell you you would have done the same!”

 

            They all laughed, and the kettle boiled. Jenny hauled herself out of her seat and made three cups of tea. “Right. Is there anything we need to sort out for this week? Do we want to get supper or lunch together at any point? I made an Ocado order on the train, so we won’t starve.”

 

             “Er,” Sarah said, not a hesitant remark but a thoughtful one, as Jenny passed the tea around. “Not sure. But I can be in for the Ocado order, the conference doesn’t start for two days.”

 

            “We need a whiteboard,” Abby said. “Something to say where we’ve all got to be. Get organised and that.”

 

            Jenny blinked at Abby in surprise and then nodded. She would never have expected _Abby_ to suggest that; Abby, though not unusually reserved, was deeply protective of her own privacy. “There’s room for something small we could put on the wall.”

 

            “Or hang on the inside of a cupboard or back of a door, if your clients take to wandering around the flat,” Abby said, which was much more like her.

 

            “Abigail Maitland,” Sarah said, with her broadest grin, “you have a nasty suspicious mind and I like the way it works.”

 

            Jenny nodded, and reached up and swung the cupboard above the sink open. There was a good inch’s clearance between the two shelves inside and the cupboard door. “I’m sure we could fit something in. Sarah, will you get one tomorrow? I have back to back meetings.”

 

            “Sure,” Sarah said cheerfully. “I think it’s a great idea.”

 

            Abby flushed, but she looked pleased. “Right. Shall we get a takeaway in? I’m starving and we’ve got nothing in the fridge.”

 

***

 

            The next morning Jenny was dressed and ready to leave the house at seven a.m. She tiptoed through the flat, hoping she hadn’t yet woken Sarah, who had lost the toss for the spare room and was sleeping on the sofa-bed. She was quite startled when Sarah, wrapped up in soft green pyjamas, appeared from nowhere. Her black hair was all over the place, her dark eyes heavy with sleep, but she was smiling.

 

            “Sorry for waking you,” Jenny murmured guiltily.

 

            “Nah, it’s fine,” Sarah said. “Have a nice day.”

 

            “You too,” Jenny said, and crept out of the door, wondering why Sarah had bothered to get up unnecessarily early just to wish her a nice day.

 

***

 

            The text that pinged into Jenny’s inbox caught her mid-dull discussion with several PR consultants, all of them plainly panting with curiosity about Jenny’s current work – which she was only going to indulge up to a point, since she found that a little mystery paid dividends. She smiled and excused herself, and left the high-ceilinged, bare room in which the party was being held, dodging several small, high, round tables and a lot of waiters with canapés.

 

            _Ring me_ , Sarah had texted her. _Stuck with some twerp who keeps asking me about BM scandal & putting his hand on my thigh. Can deal with one but not both._

 

            Jenny felt instant outrage blossom in her chest, and ducked into a small back corridor where no-one would disturb her as she called Sarah. She wasn’t sure what annoyed her more, the violation of Sarah’s personal space or the fact that whoever this was insisted on bringing up the case that had introduced Jenny to Sarah and taken up months of their professional time: the expert forging of a large number of objects introduced into the British Museum’s collection.

 

            Sarah picked up at once. “Oh! Hello, darling!”

 

            Jenny blinked at this mode of address. “Hi. Everything okay?”

 

            “Just fine, the conference is going _really_ well. Sorry, Leo, you don’t mind if I take this, do you? Is everything okay at home? I’m afraid I’m still not going to be back for dinner.”

 

            “No, that’s fine, I know. Neither am I,” Jenny said, wondering if Sarah had cast her as the boyfriend or the girlfriend in this scenario. The unknown Leo would probably find the former more off-putting, and – though she knew Sarah was a lesbian - she wasn’t sure Sarah knew she herself was bisexual. “Is it sorted?”

 

            “Oh yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll see you at home, then?”

 

            “Yes,” Jenny said, now amused.

 

            “Right. Bye, babe!” Sarah chirped, and hung up.

 

            Jenny was left staring at her mobile phone, caught between amusement and exasperation. Only Sarah. It was a perfectly reasonable strategy, but – really, Sarah.

 

            “Boyfriend?” said a waitress wisely, pushing past Jenny.

 

            “Oh, no,” Jenny said, and was surprised by a spark of disappointment. “Just a friend.”

 

***

 

            “Thanks for the save last night,” Sarah said to Jenny over brunch the next day. It was one of only two meals this week they were all able to share in order to touch base, and one which (until this sudden throwaway comment) Sarah had been spending teasing Abby mercilessly about the boyfriend whose identity she was cradling close to her chest like something treasured and fragile.

 

            “No problem,” Jenny said, sipping her coffee.

 

            “I think Lesbian Lady Detective has a real ring to it, don’t you?”

 

            Jenny spilled her coffee and Abby choked on her bruschetta. Sarah laughed and laughed, but there was something in her eyes, some kind of half-extended offer.

 

***

 

            It wasn’t often clients upset Jenny – really upset her. But then, it wasn’t often that they were fifteen-year-old girls, either, or that pain and humiliation welled from every word they spoke. More often they were angry or sad.

 

            Jenny hadn’t been able to help this one herself, but she’d promised to find someone who could; the girl who had written to her for an internship, Jessica Parker, was a promising candidate, or that techie friend of Abby’s with the hopeless crush. She also fully intended to find a good lawyer for the poor child, and had given her the benefit of her advice on dealing with blackmail. And of course, she had waived her consultation fee.

 

            None of it felt like enough.

 

            Sarah found her crying into a hopelessly mascara-stained tea-towel in the kitchen.

 

            “Oh my god,” Sarah said, and then one of those slender, warm hands rested on her back, another gently drawing Jenny’s chestnut hair back from her face. “Jenny, what’s wrong?”

 

            “We need an IT person,” Jenny choked. “In-house.”

 

            “You can hire one,” Sarah said, sounding baffled. “I mean, I agree with you, but…”

 

            “Pictures,” Jenny said dully. “The client I just saw. All she gave him was pictures, and she trusted him – there was no reason why she shouldn’t, you should be able to trust your boyfriend – but he says he’ll put them up online if she doesn’t… give him things. It’s illegal, of course, she’s only a child, but her parents don’t know and she’s too frightened to talk to them, and the police would probably insist on telling them.”

 

            There was a long moment of silence, and then Sarah said softly “Oh,” and wrapped her arms around Jenny.

 

            Jenny leaned into Sarah’s narrow, rangy frame, and said, choked: “And I couldn’t _help_ her. She was so controlled, but she was so miserable, Sarah…”

 

            “Oh,” Sarah said again, a single syllable full of understanding, and stroked a hand over Jenny’s hair, smooth and calming.

 

            “I think,” Sarah said, an unknown amount of time later, “you are about to call in sick to tonight’s dinner.”

 

            “It’s important, though.”

 

            “Relatively or absolutely speaking?”

 

            Jenny paused for a long, reluctant minute, and then said: “Relatively.” She already knew all of the people who would be going to the dinner, and could arrange to talk to them later, when she was in a better frame of mind. She couldn’t get her client’s childishly pretty, self-consciously composed, desperately hopeful face out of her head.

 

            “Well.” Sarah let go of her, and pushed her shoulders lightly. “Off you go and get your phone, and I’ll pop round the corner to get a movie. Blockbuster will still be open.” She widened her eyes, and intoned, “The last Blockbuster in London…” adding more normally, “It has to be good for something.”

 

            Jenny laughed, quite despite herself. “No disaster movies. Something fun.”

 

            “Aye-aye, cap’n,” Sarah said, already halfway out of the door again.

 

            She brought back _The Mummy_ and _Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle_. Jenny ruined the remains of her mascara even further, but this time she was crying with laughter.

 

***

 

            “Sarah said you were feeling crap last night,” Abby announced over breakfast the next morning. Since her course had now started, she was up just as early as Jenny – earlier, often.

 

            “Yes,” Jenny said. “A client I couldn’t take on.”

 

“Poor kid,” Abby said, and was silent for a moment. Jenny poured coffee that was only just cooling from the cafetière into her cup, and offered Abby another one. Abby declined.

 

            “Sarah was worried about you, though,” Abby said eventually, toying with her cereal spoon. “I mean. Jenny. You know how many people you’ve helped, right?” She looked up at Jenny from blue eyes as merciless as ice, and as straightforward. “You helped me. You helped Sarah. And all your other clients, you help them. Half the time you just give people back things, but the other half, you give them back their _lives_. That matters.”

 

            “I… wouldn’t rate it that highly,” Jenny said, a little stunned, and opened a yoghurt.

 

            “Hey,” Abby said, shrugging her shoulders. “Ask the friend you found a tank for if it doesn’t matter to him. Or that woman whose engagement ring you found. Or that gorgeous lavender albino reticulated python the other day.”

 

            “That thing was lethal,” Jenny said, sensing a certain disconnect in this logic.

 

            “Well, yeah,” Abby said. “But it matters that we got it back.” She looked away and shuffled her feet, apparently uncomfortable with this. “You can’t help everyone. You help lots of people. And you’re going to try and help this girl, right?”

 

            Jenny nodded.

 

            “So,” Abby said, and got up to put her bowl in the dishwasher. She clattered a lot more than strictly necessary.  


            “Sarah was worried about me?” Jenny said after a moment. “I’m sorry. I know it’s irrelevant. But – Sarah was worried?”

 

            Inexplicably, Abby rolled her eyes. “You two,” she said. “Yes, of course she was.”

 

            She left the kitchen, and Jenny none the wiser.

 

***

 

            Jenny’s next clue that this wasn’t going to go away was the dinner James Lester had invited them all to, and which Abby had escaped, by the simple expedient of claiming a prior engagement. (She still wouldn’t tell them her new boyfriend’s name; it was becoming a game between the three of them, almost. Sarah would burst into the room at odd moments and fling random names at her, and Jenny would casually slip names into the conversation. Abby only ever laughed, and the names were getting more and more ridiculous by the day.) Sarah had only agreed to come on the condition that she could stick close to Jenny.

 

            Jenny had agreed, and – since Sarah had brought a very limited makeup bag despite the conference, claiming that archaeologists mistrusted formal attire – had lent her a dark red lipstick to go with her asymmetrical aubergine dress.

 

            She spent the entire night trying not to watch Sarah’s mouth, and mostly failing.

 

***

 

            “It’ll be good to be back,” Sarah said, as they settled into their seats.

 

            Jenny made a noise of profound agreement. “I’m looking forward to going home.”

 

            Sarah’s feet tangled with hers under the seat. Jenny wondered if it was by accident. Abby looked between the two of them, rolled her eyes, and announced her intention to go and find the bathroom.

 

            “I got the other two Mummy films,” Sarah said casually. “They’re crap, it’s hilarious. Or at least, the third one is – the second one has Rachel Weisz in and is therefore perfect. We should have a movie night.”

 

            “I’d like that,” Jenny said, and took her courage in both hands. “Just the two of us?”

 

            The train wound slowly through north London, picking up speed, and Sarah smiled. “That was what I had in mind.”

 

            “Sounds fun,” Jenny said, trying to sound casual.

 

            She didn’t manage to catch her breath again until somewhere around Peterborough.


End file.
